June and July 2012: A Victorian Celebration Reading

I’m joining the Victorian Celebration Reading hosted by A Literary Odyssey, for the months of June and July this year. Victorian era refers to the time when the Queen Victoria was ruling the Britain (1837-1901), during which time the arts, sciences and literatures flourished considerably. With classics as one of my favorite genres and my reading schemes often fall around the era, I thought why not joining this celebration. I’ve always enjoyed the different spheres of the beauty and the details of the Victorian life captured in the reading, be it the romance, the mystery or scientific touch, the gothic atmospheres, and specifically the language they spoke.

With this celebration, the goal is to read as many Victorian readings as we wish, and we may include non-British authors’ books as long as the book was written during the Victorian period. Beside some British books, I will include two French writers’ of the era. And here is my list:

1. Bram Stoker – Dracula (1897) (I predict this would be the toughest book on the list, but I’m curious and I’ll try) 
2. Oscar Wilde – The Happy Prince and Other Stories (1888)
3. Robert Louis Stevenson – Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886)
4. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – A Study in Scarlet (1887)
5. Charles Dickens – A Tale of Two Cities (1859)
6. Emile Zola – The Belly of Paris (1873)
7. Jules Verne – Twenty Thousands Leagues under The Sea (1870)

So, happy Victorian reading!